A subsequent examination, carried out by the team's forensic archaeologist, revealed that William Thuck was around five feet six inches tall, had a shock of red hair and a small 'goatee' type beard. He would have walked with a slight stoop, been plagued by arthritis, and probably the occasional headache as a result of a hairline skull fracture. However, none of this was apparent at the time of the exhumation. It was merely noted that the skeleton was of middling height, wore a gold ring on the middle finger of its left hand, and a gold chain about its nect, attached to which was a large and somewhat corroded copper disc. This was at first thought to be some kind of religious token, but there was great excitement when, upon subjecting the disc to a preliminary clean, the following cryptic message was found on its obverse side:
1:19 2:9 2:16 3:8 3:12 4:6 5:21 5:36 6:7 7:4 8:28 9:22 10:19 10:29 11:3 11:32 12:17 13:3 13:4
And upon its reverse side, the following words:
The mouth is stopt, the roar is still'd, with wood and iron the throat is filld
Mowbray and his team had clearly stumbled across a three hundred year old mystery. An informal meeting was held later that day to try and decipher the message. The general consensus seemed to be that the numbers were a code of some kind, the first number of each pair referring, perhaps, to a page in a book, and the second to a line, word or letter number. The poem on the disc was probably a clue, or confirmation of the coded message. If the code was designed to be deciphered at some time in the future, the team came to the conclusion that the most likely key lay in the Bible. A brief look at the King James Bible revealed that there were three books with thirteen chapters (thirteen being the highest pre-colon number in the 'code'). The Book of Nehemiah in the Old Testament was checked, as were 2 Corinthians and Hebrews in the New. In each case, the first number was held to denote the chapter, and the second either a word or letter position. Which ever way the team looked at the problem, the message produced was total rubbish.
A further brainstorming session was held after a break for tea, at which, following some quite bizarre suggestions, one of the genealogists casually mentioned the fact that Thuck's tombstone inscription was thirteen lines long. This theory was duly put to the test. This time there was no mistake. Their reward was this message:
O LORDE BELOW ME SEEK IT
This, coupled with the poem on the disc, led to only one conclusion; something was buried below Thuck's coffin. Mowbray immediately re-started the dig and, only a few minutes later, struck a solid object. As the soil was cleared away, he recognised the familiar shape of a cannon.
A seventeenth century cannon was possibly the last thing Mowbray and his team expected to find. It was fortunate that one of his colleagues, Dr. Judi Flowers, was an expert on historic ordnance. She was given the job of examining the piece once ithad been lifted. The two things she immediately noticed were that the touch-hole (that part of the cannon where the powder is ignited) had been filled with lead, and the muzzle stoppered by the insertion of an oversized ball, which appeared to have been hammered into place. It was obvious that the weapon had been sealed with the intention either of concealing, or preserving, something therein. Subjecting the cannon to x-ray photography would have been pointless and, since the piece was in no way unique, she decided to cut it open. She obtained specialist cutting gear, and the rest of the team waited with great anticipation while the end of the barrel was removed.
In the next post, the contents of the cannon are revealed.
Tuesday 27 July 2010
Monday 26 July 2010
The inscription
It took three days to clear the site of trees and other vegetation. At this stage, Dr. Mowbray called in members of the local amateur genealogical society to record the inscriptions on the gravestones. Their findings, published in the Dorset Genealogical Quarterly, make fascinating reading, not least because of the rich supply of epitaphs that came to light. One such marked the last burial in 1699, the recorded year of the parish amalgamation. This final interment was commemorated by a stone bearing the following inscription:
Beatus vir qui timet Dominum
Good people as ye do pass by this place
Please pray I do besech
For one who hopes for grace
For once like thee I livd begott and breathed
But now lie still in death
My soule to God bequeathed
Remember ye that life doth pass away
Thou livest now but death may have his way
His fatal dart will pierce thy flesh anon
Therfor enjoy thyself ere life is gone
Guillielmus Throckus
Obit 1699
The simple sentiments and typically dire warnings of the epitaph caught the imagination of Mowbray and his team. Remembering the old belief (still current in some parts of the County of Dorset) that the last person buried in a churchyard was doomed to watch over it for all eternity, they decided to exhume William Throck's coffin (Guillielmus Throckus was, of course, a Latinized version of his name), the quicker to speed him to his final resting place.
The coffin, found at a depth of seven feet, was in remarkably good condition, considering its three centuries in the ground. It was of plain lead, with the letters 'W.T.' stamped on the lid. It was carefully raised using portable lifting gear and taken to a tent, erected nearby, for the purpose of examination. When the lid was removed it was discovered, incredibly, that another lead coffin lay inside. This casket was also marked on the lid, but this time with the name 'William Thuck'. This was no great surprise to the team. Seventeenth century spelling was nothing if not haphazard, and it was not unknown for even the well-educated to spell their names in four or five different ways. The inner coffin was duly opened, and the team came face to face with the mortal remains of Master William Thuck.
Beatus vir qui timet Dominum
Good people as ye do pass by this place
Please pray I do besech
For one who hopes for grace
For once like thee I livd begott and breathed
But now lie still in death
My soule to God bequeathed
Remember ye that life doth pass away
Thou livest now but death may have his way
His fatal dart will pierce thy flesh anon
Therfor enjoy thyself ere life is gone
Guillielmus Throckus
Obit 1699
The simple sentiments and typically dire warnings of the epitaph caught the imagination of Mowbray and his team. Remembering the old belief (still current in some parts of the County of Dorset) that the last person buried in a churchyard was doomed to watch over it for all eternity, they decided to exhume William Throck's coffin (Guillielmus Throckus was, of course, a Latinized version of his name), the quicker to speed him to his final resting place.
The coffin, found at a depth of seven feet, was in remarkably good condition, considering its three centuries in the ground. It was of plain lead, with the letters 'W.T.' stamped on the lid. It was carefully raised using portable lifting gear and taken to a tent, erected nearby, for the purpose of examination. When the lid was removed it was discovered, incredibly, that another lead coffin lay inside. This casket was also marked on the lid, but this time with the name 'William Thuck'. This was no great surprise to the team. Seventeenth century spelling was nothing if not haphazard, and it was not unknown for even the well-educated to spell their names in four or five different ways. The inner coffin was duly opened, and the team came face to face with the mortal remains of Master William Thuck.
Sunday 25 July 2010
The lost County
On the 26th of November 1697, Isaiah Stone, gent, of the village of Southwell on the Isle of Portland, recorded in his diary:
Much winde. Much raine. My hat was blowne off.
This bald statement is the only record we have of a fierce storm, coupled with an unusually high spring tide, that is believed to have raged along the south coast of England on that day. And it was this storm, I think, that saw the final inundation and destruction of the County of Middenshire.
If you haven't heard of Middenshire you're in very good company. Until just over twenty years ago, no-one knew of its existence. Then, in 1988, a chance discovery by a group of archaeologists roused a flurry of excitement in the normally calm world of historians and geographers. The unlikely source of the excitement was the overgrown and disused churchyard of a forgotten place of worship in Dorset. The ruined remains of the church of St. Uncumber, patron saint of bored housewives, was deep in undergrowth near the village of Osmington. Its existence was, of course, known about, but it had not previously been the subject of historical or archaeological research. The church, built around 1430, was the religious hub of the smallest parish in Dorset, if not in England. In its heyday, its priest ministered to the inhabitants of nine houses, the tithes of which were valued at two shillings and fourpence annually. It took almost 270 years (and a turnover of almost as many priests) for The Church to do the sensible thing, and amalgamate St. Uncumber's with the neighbouring parish. Even then, this was only because the last priest went mad, and his two predecessors were convicted of smuggling, and all because of the beggarly living they had been given. By the middle of the twentieth century, the only access to the church was via land that belonged to an eccentric recluse, who resisted all requests from Dorset archaeologists to allow them to cross his property. When he died in 1988, allegedly from a surfeit of beef dripping, the land was passed to his only living descendent, who knew nothing about the ruins. He set about obtaining planning permission for a housing estate on his newly acquired land. The details of the plans came to the notice of Dr. Steve Mowbray, senior archaeologist with the South Coast Museums Service, who contacted the owner to advise him of his legal obligation to allow the site to be excavated prior to any work taking place. The new owner having readily agreed to this, Mowbray petitioned the Church Commissioners for permission to carry out a survey and some superficial excavation of the church. In fact, he was given a great deal more. The Commissioners, having no plans to restore the church, entered into an agreement to hand over the church and the parcel of land on which it stood to English Heritage, who obtained for it Grade 1 Listed Building status. The Commissioners made arrangements for the church to be de-consecrated, and the bodies buried in the churchyard to be moved. Then, in an almost unprecedented step, they gave Dr. Mowbray permission to examine the contents of the coffins at the time of their exhumation.
In my next post, I'll tell you what the archaeologists found.
Much winde. Much raine. My hat was blowne off.
This bald statement is the only record we have of a fierce storm, coupled with an unusually high spring tide, that is believed to have raged along the south coast of England on that day. And it was this storm, I think, that saw the final inundation and destruction of the County of Middenshire.
If you haven't heard of Middenshire you're in very good company. Until just over twenty years ago, no-one knew of its existence. Then, in 1988, a chance discovery by a group of archaeologists roused a flurry of excitement in the normally calm world of historians and geographers. The unlikely source of the excitement was the overgrown and disused churchyard of a forgotten place of worship in Dorset. The ruined remains of the church of St. Uncumber, patron saint of bored housewives, was deep in undergrowth near the village of Osmington. Its existence was, of course, known about, but it had not previously been the subject of historical or archaeological research. The church, built around 1430, was the religious hub of the smallest parish in Dorset, if not in England. In its heyday, its priest ministered to the inhabitants of nine houses, the tithes of which were valued at two shillings and fourpence annually. It took almost 270 years (and a turnover of almost as many priests) for The Church to do the sensible thing, and amalgamate St. Uncumber's with the neighbouring parish. Even then, this was only because the last priest went mad, and his two predecessors were convicted of smuggling, and all because of the beggarly living they had been given. By the middle of the twentieth century, the only access to the church was via land that belonged to an eccentric recluse, who resisted all requests from Dorset archaeologists to allow them to cross his property. When he died in 1988, allegedly from a surfeit of beef dripping, the land was passed to his only living descendent, who knew nothing about the ruins. He set about obtaining planning permission for a housing estate on his newly acquired land. The details of the plans came to the notice of Dr. Steve Mowbray, senior archaeologist with the South Coast Museums Service, who contacted the owner to advise him of his legal obligation to allow the site to be excavated prior to any work taking place. The new owner having readily agreed to this, Mowbray petitioned the Church Commissioners for permission to carry out a survey and some superficial excavation of the church. In fact, he was given a great deal more. The Commissioners, having no plans to restore the church, entered into an agreement to hand over the church and the parcel of land on which it stood to English Heritage, who obtained for it Grade 1 Listed Building status. The Commissioners made arrangements for the church to be de-consecrated, and the bodies buried in the churchyard to be moved. Then, in an almost unprecedented step, they gave Dr. Mowbray permission to examine the contents of the coffins at the time of their exhumation.
In my next post, I'll tell you what the archaeologists found.
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